


desert dawns

by izabellwit



Category: RWBY
Genre: Bonding, Character Development, Cooking Lessons, Developing Friendships, Gen, Hot Chocolate, Humor, Mild Spoilers, Post-Volume 7 (RWBY), Sharing a Body, Vacuo (RWBY), in which ozpin does teacher things and team jnr continues to be iconic, this is just my excuse to explore where ozpin and team jnr stand post-atlas tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:28:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22912501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izabellwit/pseuds/izabellwit
Summary: Finally in Vacuo, the team gets a chance to breathe... but for Oz, things are a little more complicated.(or: in which Oz actually has a nice moment, for once, somehow; team JNR attempt a baking gift, and Oscar is Sir Sleeping Through This Fic. Home may be far away, but that doesn't make where you are now mean any less.)
Relationships: Jaune Arc & Oscar Pine & Lie Ren & Nora Valkyrie, Ozpin & Nora Valkyrie, Ozpin & Oscar Pine, Ozpin & Team JNPR
Comments: 30
Kudos: 206





	desert dawns

**Author's Note:**

> I mentioned in a previous fic of mine that I think Oz is going to have a new dynamic with the main group, what with him no longer being in charge... and I really wanted to explore that!! Also, I love team JNPR to bits, and their few interactions with Oz have always been very interesting to me. So.... *jazz hands* ta-daaaaa
> 
> A quick warning: there's a mild moment of body dysphoria, very vague, that sort of continues throughout the fic. I am of the opinion that Oz is... probably in a constant state of this, due to the thousands of years of body-sharing and soul-merge stuff. (This is also why, when moving or gesturing, Oz thinks of it as "moving _their_ hand"-- he doesn't consider Oscar's body his. So the pronouns can get a little funny at times.) 
> 
> That said, enjoy!!!

For a moment, Oz does not know where he is. 

Eyes open, a ceiling above his head, the sheets are too warm but when he pushes them back something feels wrong— _that is not my hand—_

Awareness comes back to him. No, he realizes. That is not his hand at all. Oscar’s hand. Their hand.

He is awake. Oscar is not.

Oz takes a moment, sitting up, reorienting himself. The sense of Oscar, there in the back of his mind, is still deep in sleep and doesn’t seem keen on waking up anytime soon. Which is reasonable, Oz admits, looking out the window. The desert sky is as dark as it is clear, and the moon shines down bold and bright. It’s either incredibly late or unspeakably early; if Oz tries to get Oscar up, the boy will no doubt be cross with him. 

And yet—Oz is awake, now, and in such a way he is not sure he can sleep again. Neither does the idea of lying still waiting for Oscar to wake up appeal to him. Their lips press. He frowns down at the hands that are not his own. Oscar does not stir. The room the boy shares with team JNR is utterly silent, soundless but for Oz’s own soft breaths. 

Oz hesitates, then carefully pushes away the covers. He won’t go far, he decides. He’ll just… make a drink. Hot chocolate, maybe. He’ll sit in the small living room area of this house and watch the sunrise. It’ll at least be something to do. 

They have been in Vacuo for almost a week, and even now the pause in the action is unsettling to him. Though kind of Theodore to procure them a place to stay, the almost-peace of Vacuo is weirdly off-putting after Atlas. There’s a tension to it, a sort of hesitation that lingers on, not just in Oz but in all the others, too— waiting, always, for the other shoe to drop. 

The anxiety, from Oz and Oscar both, is exhausting. Combined with the heat of the desert, well… they have not been sleeping well at all lately. 

Though it isn’t exactly hot now, of course— with the darkness comes a sharp drop, icy midnights. Oz has always loved this about the deserts: the swiftness with which it changes, the rapid shift in temperature and landscape. He has been reincarnated in Vacuo numerous times, and the memories remain, faint and fond. One incarnation had loved the desert sky so much he’d used to wake up at the break of dawn to watch the sunrise, each and every morning without fail. 

Which— may explain why Oz is up, actually. Old habits die hard, and Oz is nothing if not full of old habits.

He considers this, turning to sit with their feet dangling over the edge of the bed. The desert midnight chill is in full swing for the moment: frost edging the window, icy wind snapping in the air. Oz pulls on a pair of socks—the floor is bitterly cold, and while Oz doesn’t mind it, Oscar might rouse at the sensation—and then drapes Oscar’s jacket on their shoulders. There, warm. If the boy wakes up anyway, he can’t say Oz didn’t try.

He picks up the cane as he heads out the door, and flips it through their hands as he walks.

The house is deathly silent as Oz heads for the kitchen, the whole house under the spell of sleep. The hallway is not nearly as dark as he thought, though, and Oz pauses when he sees why. The kitchen. The door is closed, but light spills out underneath. He can hear the very faint clatter of dishes. Someone else is up?

He considers turning back around, but, well. He’s come all this way for hot chocolate, it seems silly to turn away now. And it’s not like he’s against having company.

Perhaps it’s Qrow. He hopes so, vaguely. They are still not—on the best terms, he and Qrow, but Oz would like to change that. He… misses the other. Sometimes. Which is an incredibly strange feeling, given Qrow is right here with all the rest of them, but well. There is no-one for Oz to blame for that but himself. 

He opens the door, stepping into the light, and regrets this decision almost at once.

“ _Cute boy Oz!_ ”

Their eyes squeeze tightly shut, and Oz inhales deeply. “Miss Valkyrie,” he says. He doesn’t protest the nickname. It is, he has realized with something in his soul that might be despair, apparently useless to try. Eyes open again, he surveys the rest of the kitchen. Jaune Arc and Lie Ren are there too, all awake. A team meeting, perhaps? But why in the dead of night? And— odd. They had not tried to rouse Oscar. 

He realizes suddenly he had missed their absence in the room, and frowns. How…unobservant of him. 

“What are you doing up at this hour?” he asks, mild, and raises a brow when all three exchange immediately guilty glances. Interesting. 

“Um,” says Jaune Arc, and then nothing more.

Well then. 

Oz nods, understanding, and moves on into the kitchen, heading for the counter. None of his business, then, and if they don’t want him involved he will respect that. He extends the cane and taps it absently against the ground as he searches. Now, where do they keep the cups? And the powder, too, that’s important. He rifles through the cupboard. Cocoa, cocoa, cocoa… aha. 

Lie Ren clears his throat just as Oz is getting down a cup; Oz glances back at him. “Is Oscar…?”

“No. He is still sleeping.” Oz considers the three of them. “I assume this is something you wish to keep from him?” He cannot exactly hide the sudden distaste this idea gives him. Oscar is fond of these three, to such a degree that Oz is beginning to feel the same, if only by proxy—they are Oscar’s friends, his confidants, and at this point, perhaps even his team. This exclusion bothers Oz in a way he cannot deny feels strangely personal.

But already Jaune Arc is waving his hands, looking panicked. “No, no, not like that,” he says, waving his hands down at Oz. “It’s just—um—”

“None of your business,” Nora Valkyrie is insisting, hotly. 

“It’s a surprise for him,” Lie Ren says, and both teammates turn on him.

“Ren!”

“You can’t just give it away!”

“He just said Oscar was asleep. It’s fine.” Lie Ren meets Oz’s eyes. “Oscar… misses home. Mistral. He hasn’t said as much to us directly, but…”

“...It’s obvious,” Nora Valkyrie continues reluctantly, when the other trails off. Oz cannot deny that statement. It is indeed very obvious. Oscar had done well in Haven; had managed in Atlas. Vacuo, however, is unlike anything the boy has ever known—he has not complained, but his dejection had been obvious—to Oz, and, apparently to them. 

He considers them. “So?”

“He mentioned this thing his aunt used to make,” Jaune Arc says, finally, apparently resigned to spilling the secret in full. “A Mistralian breakfast dish. So we thought, we were going to try…” He gestures. Oz follows his gaze. Pots, pans, ingredients on the table behind them.

“I see,” Oz says, mind whirling. He goes to take a drink, but he has yet to finish the cocoa—powder puffs before Oscar’s face and Oz draws the cup away, frowning down at it. He turns to the sink. Hot water, hot water… “That is kind of you.”

Nora Valkyrie is laughing at him. Oz ignores it with the ease of long years of practice, and reaches for the milk. Fantastic. Hot chocolate at last.

When he turns back around, Jaune Arc is staring at him. “…Don’t you want coffee? Or, like… tea?”

Now, why would he want that? “That is Oscar’s preference,” Oz explains, and sips at the drink. Not nearly as good as his stash at Beacon was, but store-bought powder will have to do. At least it’s sweet. 

Even Lie Ren is squinting at him now. “…is that _all_ you drink?”

Oz takes another sip. A long sip. He draws it out. All three children are leaning toward him, enraptured, caught in the spell, looking desperate for an answer. Jaune Arc is about to fall off his seat. 

Oz lowers his cup. “Yes.”

Jaune Arc cants to the side. Nora Valkyrie puts both hands on the table and leans toward him, looking delighted. “But!” she says. “You had a _teapot_.”

“That I did,” Oz agrees. He still misses that teapot.

“Was it just—that whole time—” Her voice squeaks. “ _Cocoa_?”

Oz takes another long sip. Jaune Arc twitches. He hides his smile in the rim of his cup. “Yes.”

Nora Valkyrie puts her head in her arms and cackles. Lie Ren looks exasperated. Jaune Arc looks somewhere closer to despairing. Oz steps forward, still smiling faintly, and surveys their table of food. “Ignoring my drinking habits,” he says, lips twitching with honest amusement when Nora Valkyrie cackles louder, “how goes your cooking attempts?”

Nora Valkyrie stops laughing. All three look at the oven with something like dread.

Oz takes another sip. “I see,” he says, and does his best to keep his laughter entirely internal. He taps the Long Memory against the ground, a rythmic knocking, and considers the problem. Now then. How best to go about this?

Oz looks down at the table, noting the ingredients and calling upon new-old memory. He knows the dish they are talking about. It is Oscar’s favorite, and a Mistralian staple; Oscar’s aunt, however, often put her own twist to the recipe. Oz takes another long drink of cocoa and lowers his cup, decision made. 

“Oscar’s aunt makes it with cinnamon,” he says, turning away from the table to head for one of the nearby couches. “Also,” he adds, taking a glance at what looks like to be failed cooking test number one, “it cooks best under gentle heat.”

“ _Gentle_ heat,” Lie Ren repeats, sounding disgusted that he had not realized sooner, and Jaune Arc says, “Wait, do we even have cinnamon?”

“I’ll look!” Nora Valkyrie calls, and rockets off to the cupboards.

Oz smiles, faintly, and settles back on the couch, leaning the Long Memory by their side. He finishes his cocoa as they cook, only speaking when he sees a mistake in the making— less and less as the session drags on, and team JNR gets a hang of the dish. They are not bad at cooking— just chaotic— and soon he feels it’s safe to sit back and watch. 

He doesn’t offer much more conversation beyond instruction, however. It is not that he and team JNR are on bad terms— it is simply that they are on more neutral ones. Oscar adores them, and they appear to adore him in kind; if not for the echo of Pyrrha Nikos who still haunts their footsteps, they would by now likely have started introducing themselves as JNOR. Oz gives them another two months before they start doing it anyway. 

So no, they are not on bad terms—but the lingering shadow of Oz’s lies and the lives it cost them still hangs heavy. He suspects they do not blame him for Pyrrha Nikos’ death, for all that he blames himself, but rather they blame him for everything else—the false hope, the lie of possibility, the fact that every chance he gave them made it sound like they could save the world—a chance Pyrrha Nikos took and died for, never mind that the foe she faced was not Salem.

Lie Ren is setting up the dish on the counter, Nora making towers out of leftover ingredients, and Jaune Arc has transitioned to doing the dishes. Even with the hole in their team, Oz thinks, they are remarkably in-tune with one another. He is… glad, to see it. In the face of adversity, they have faltered and stumbled and then grown stronger together.

He may have never given them the same attention he gave team RWBY, but he always thought these three were capable of remarkable things. It is why he let Jaune Arc stay in Beacon, despite his painfully faked transcripts. It is a relief to know, at least on that… Oz wasn’t wrong to give them a chance.

The cooking drags on, and soon, so does sunrise. By the time the sun begins to poke out over the horizon, the final attempt is in the oven to bake, and Nora Valkyrie has bounced over to bother him once again. 

She throws herself to sit at the couch armrest, and kicks her feet in the air. Her gaze is thoughtful, considering and suspicious in equal measure, and they both ignore the way her teammates have collapsed in exhaustion on the kitchen table behind her. “ _You,”_ she declares at last, “were being very helpful.”

“I am a teacher,” he reminds her. 

“ _Was_ a teacher.”

“I have a degree,” Oz informs her, dryly. “Multiple, even. _Am_ a teacher.”

She clicks her tongue. “Ugh, what- _ever._ ” She leans back, eyes rolling, and kicks out her feet into the air. Oz waits, watching her, letting her gather her thoughts. At last she seems to find the words. “...Thanks for helping us not fuck up the dish, I guess. Jaune was super worried about it.” She glances back at the table, a momentary flash of worry on her face. “It—it _is_ Oscar’s favorite, right?” 

“Oh, no. He hates it.” Her head snaps around. Oz laughs quietly. “I apologize. That was in poor taste. Yes, Miss Valkyrie, it is his favorite. I think… he will like this very much.”

She scowls at him, then blinks, her eyes catching on something— the Long Memory, resting beside him on the couch. She gives the cane a puzzled look. “You brought your cane with you?”

He looks down; the cane, as it should be, is by their side. He puts a hand on the knob and shrugs. “Yes.”

“You just bring that thing everywhere, huh?” 

“It is… dear to me.” He considers her, wondering how to spin this— but her expression is open and curious, her questions meant honestly, not mockingly. For all that Oscar is not awake, Oz can almost feel the echo of his exasperation. He hesitates. “Ah… you could say, Miss Valkyrie, that much like what the dish you are making means to Oscar… this cane, too, reminds me of home.”

Nora Valkyrie stops moving at once, her legs stilling mid-air. Behind them, Lie Ren and Jaune Arc have gone silent, pretending badly not to eavesdrop, and Oz can see them exchanging glances. Nora Valkyrie does not look back, however; instead she looks down at him, considering, her expression strangely solemn. “…Do you miss it, too?”

The question catches him off-guard, and for a moment Oz falters. The memories rise up in flashes, echoes of a different time, different places. A warm house and warmer hearth fire, the table they set for four. The two children, never willing to wait and never wanting to sit still—blue eyes, and a laughing face, a hand in his.

“Yes,” Oz says, after a long moment. The words are stilted. He suddenly feels very old, tired all the way to his bones. He puts down the empty cup. 

Nora Valkyrie snatches it up. Oz blinks. 

“One sec,” she says to Oz’s blank stare, and flies off to the kitchen. Oz watches, bemused, as team JNR confers around the cup and then repeats his actions from before, making a new batch of cocoa, that Nora then takes back and brings to Oz. She holds it out for him. Oz takes the cup warily. 

“Thanks for helping us, old man Oz,” Nora says, and grins. “Give us a warning before Oscar wakes, okay?”

“…Of course,” Oz says, thrown by the new nickname, and watches her bounce back to her team. She chatters, and they laugh, the moment forgotten. He looks down at his cup and takes a sip of the cocoa. It’s not his usual mix— there’s a bit of spice to it. Cinnamon and chili powder? 

…It’s good.

He stares down at it, contemplative, and hesitantly takes another sip. He looks back up at the team. They are laughing, distracted, debating on whether the dish is done or not. All three are smiling.

Oz considers them for a long moment, and then he turns away. This time, he’s smiling too.

Oscar wakes up mid-way through sunrise. When he senses the boy rousing, Oz takes the Long Memory in hand and raps the cane against the ground to alarm the team. They rush to hide the dish, freshly-baked; Oz turns their head to the window, and keeps their eyes on the desert sun.

_What…?_

“I apologize,” Oz says. In the reflection of the glass, Oscar’s eyes burn gold. “I woke before you. I wanted to see the sunrise.”

 _Oh._ He gets the sense Oscar would yawn if he could. _That’s fine…_ There’s a momentary pause, considering. Then: _Why do I taste chocolate?_

“It is a perfectly fine drink,” Oz says, in mild protest. Honestly, he has no idea what the boy has against it.

 _Sure, but in the morning? It’s an evening drink. Coffee is better._

Oz shakes his head, smiling faintly, and fades away to the background rather than rehash the old argument. Oscar’s head dips forward; the boy just barely catches himself from knocking them out against the glass. “Ow.”

_Careful._

“Mm-hm.” He rubs his forehead. He goes to turn around—

“ _SURPRISE!_ ”

—and screams at Nora abruptly popping up and shouting in his face, toppling right off the couch. 

_…Ah._

“What!?”

“Nora!”

“Ah, we just woke the whole house, didn’t we…”

The house is warm and bright, the desert outside turning a brilliant gold underneath the dawning sun. It is not home— it is nothing more than a temporary stop— but as Oscar splutters and Nora grins and the rest of team JNR clamor up behind her, there is a warmth that lingers on. They help Oscar to his feet and fumble to present their gift; they beam bright at his wordless joy.

The boy is delighted, and his team is pleased— team RWBY and Qrow and the others wander in with calls of confusion and delight and annoyance at the noise— and the smell of cinnamon lingers heavy in the air. 

And it is not home, maybe, but it is something half-way there, and so Oz laughs, quiet and sincere, and sits back to watch the show.

**Author's Note:**

> I like to imagine that "cute boy Oz" becomes a purely Oscar nickname, whereas Oz gets stuck with "old man Oz." Oscar doesn't care either way, but Oz continues to be exasperated. Children, why.
> 
> I'll probably do a few more fics in this vein, with team RWBY and Qrow and the like... I have no idea where the show is going to take the tired wizard man, but I'm super excited to see what they do!! I just hope he gets like, mild happiness, you know, at some point. Poor guy deserves a break.
> 
> [If you wanna rec this fic, you can reblog it here!!](https://izaswritings.tumblr.com/post/611051889222647808/title-desert-dawns-fandom-rwby) Also, if you have any questions or just want to talk, [my tumblr](http://izaswritings.tumblr.com) is always open!!
> 
> Any thoughts?


End file.
